


The Bunk

by jplus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Multi, post Star Wars Episode VII: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 15:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jplus/pseuds/jplus
Summary: Rose Tico wakes up injured aboard the Millennium Falcon, to find that she is one of only a handful of survivors from the cruel defeat of the Battle of Crait. As she lies healing on a ship crowded with desperate soldiers she can only listen for the first few days. They will rebuild the Rebellion. None of them are alone.





	The Bunk

**Author's Note:**

> I have had a Rose-centric POV chapter bopping around in one of my other fics, "Jetsam", for a while....and it fits there, it really does.... but damn it, Rose deserves her own space. And as one of my writing teachers said long ago, "if it would stand on its own, let it stand." 
> 
> A little angsty-but-gritting-our-teeth-and-going-on one-shot (those of you who have read my other stuff are laughing.....yeah, like she does one-shots).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the Falcon, during those first days, there had been no place to hide from anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she woke up Finn was right there, sitting on a crate with his head leaning against the wall beside hers. She groggily wondered why he was sleeping that way.

"Hey," she rasped, then wished she hadn't because he jumped, also because the sound of her own voice made her head hurt.

"Hey!" he said, scrambling to lean over her, his beautiful eyes so earnest, so worried, "Hey Rose…Rose. How are you feeling?"

 _Awful,_ she thought, _smashed to pieces._

"I'm ok," she said.

 _Oh damn, oh damn, that hurt._  

"Finn...where are we?"

"Don't move, Rose, you just lay still." He took her hand. "We're safe. We're on the Falcon."

_The Millennium Falcon? Holy shit._

 

 

 

 Everyone had come running to look.

The Falcon was a refurbishedCEC YT-1300f light freighter _….refurbished like maybe by a drunk person with a serious need for speed....._ she’d seen it on the tarmac at D’Qar before they evacced ahead of Starkiller _._

 _Girodyne SRB42 sublight engines, Class 0.4.5 or 5_ _Isu-Sim SSP05 hyperdrive sticking out there right in front of Goddess and everybody._

_"Holy Fuck!" Paige had said, Look at that!" "What the guns?" she'd asked, Paige knew way more about guns than she did. "No, under the front struts...shit Rosie. That's an Aracyd concussion missile array....Hoo boy! How is that even attached?"_

Han Solo’s famous ship.She hadn’t seen him though which had been kind of disappointing at the time.

He was gone now…dead.

Paige was gone.

Finn was alive. She was alive and they were on the Millennium Falcon.

 

 

 

 

 

 _Wait why…..why was she on the Falcon? How many other ships did they have?_  

"Finn....what happened? When did help come? Where is everybody?" 

He sat straighter then and held his mouth very still, working his jaw in that funny way he did when he was about to try to bullshit her.

Then he stopped, drew abreath and let it go.

 

"No...nobody answered, " he said very slowly as if he was ashamed."Skywalker came but he died, sort of, then Rey came. That was all." 

 _Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,……_  

"How many of us are left?" she whispered.

 

 

 

During the first days when all they had for shelter was the Falcon and the few breathable pockets in those empty asteroid “caves” that Chewie brought them to, sixty people had huddled “ass to elbow” as Poe Dameron liked to put it, in what was for all it’s tricks still a freighter originally designed for a max of crew of twelve. All they had aboard for med supplies were crates of bacta patches so she lay there for days in her wall bunk by the door to what passed for a galley, wrapped up and healing slowly from cracked ribs and a concussion, with nothing to do but listen.

 

General Organa walked around everywhere through the ship, leaning on a cane sometimes, talking to everyone individually.

When she came to Rose she smiled and sat down on Finn's crate to take her hand, "I'm so glad you're still with us Rose."

 

 _The General has such small hands,_ Rose thought randomly. _Like Grandmother’s, except for the silver rings._  

_We couldn't stop it. We got close but there were too many of them. Poe tried to break it off when he realized, I think to just save as many as he could but almost nobody made it back inside Finn says._

_I saved him and he saved me. He wouldn't stop. I couldn't let him die._  

_He blames himself and he still thinks in absolutes sometimes….he’s trying not to._

_We disobeyed orders. We had a plan.Poe only did it because he believed in us. I convinced Finn and he convinced Poe. Then we screwed everything up. We trusted that son of a bitch, I actually thought I liked him, that he had....and then he…..they would have killed us. Finn tried to talk to some of them. I swear two of them hesitated but then that silver command trooper….I think it was a woman,shot everyone in the bay. Finn knew her. She called him by a number. It was personal._

_It’s all our fault. We tried so hard. We almost made it but we failed._

 

All she could do with her sore ribs and bandaged neck was whisper, "I'm....I'm sorry," as the tears leaked out the sides of her eyes.

 

"I know," the General said and laid a cool hand on her forehead. “Rest now, Rose.We need you.”

 

She slept a lot those first days and heard only snatches of things.

Engines.

The hum of at least three different kinds of shield generators. _Novaldex. Torplex. Sienar_ ….

Droids beeping.

What sounded like a lion roaring in the cockpit and she later learned was a wookie snoring.

The General and Commander D’Acy’s voices talking in the viewport behind the thin back wall.

Kaydel Ko Connix’s voice in the same place saying quietly, plaintively…”don’t…none of us…Micha…”

The old Sullastan, Commander Nunb coughing, almost constantly.

She learned later that the low “haummmmmm…naaaaaa…haummmmm….” she heard beneath other noises in the hallway was C’ai Threnailli humming. The Abenado prayed that way. 

Footsteps going into back toward the galley well after the bay was darkened so first watch could sleep. Somebody started the sonic washer running loudly back there though not quite enough to cover the sound of sobbing. Connix got out of her own bed and tiptoed out between the other cots. Rose could hear her talking quietly for a long time to whoever it was. 

Rey's voice among others in the central bay even before Rey introduced herself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She brought Rose water at some point on that the second or third day, and sat in Finn’s chair while Finn was briefly elsewhere walking with the General. 

Rose had expected a mysterious mystical warrior to look very different, a little more....sweeping maybe?...taller at any rate, certainly nothing like a slight, wiry, pale but rosy cheeked girl her own age.

The last Jedi apprentice had a wide, shy smile and short scruffy mechanics fingernails.

"Hi. I'm Rey, Finn's friend," she said. "I came with Chewbacca."

Rose found out later that this was how she'd introduced herself, sheepishly, to almost everybody.

 

"I know," Rose said. It was very hard to turn but she could see the girl shake her head as she laughed a little nervously.

"So weird. That's exactly what Commander Dameron said. It's as if everyone knows me and I don't know...."

"Finn talks about you...well, pretty much constantly."

Rose hoped that didn't come out awkward. She hadn't mean it to.

_She thought maybe she remembered kissing Finn....not 100% sure, oh boy.....she remembered still being strapped in the hopper then though, so that couldn't have really happened, right?.....ohhhh, she really did remember it in a freakishly clear life-passing-before-your-eyes-way though. he’d looked so surprised….”slack-jawed and knob-smacked” Paige used to say…..but nothing had hurt then and she’d felt happy, like laughing..…So maybe not real...?._

 

"Oh hell. That's also exactly what Commander Dameron....I mean, Poe...said,” Rey held the cup so Rose could drink from a bent straw without turning her head much."You should probably know that Finn's also done nothing but talk about you for the last four days."

 

"Look," she said, conspiratorially, "Here's what we should do, when he tries to introduce us, because he will, he keeps introducing everybody to everybody. I mean I know he's just doing it because he's insanely worried and he feels like he's part of all of you now and he needs to knit everything together or something and it's brave and sweet but it's getting a little embarrassing. He's tried to introduce me to C3-P0 twice in the last hour and I've already met C3-P0 I think two dozen times....we should fake that we already know each other really well." 

"You want to prank Finn?”

“Yes,” the girl said earnestly, “I think it’s a vital first step….also, it was Commander Dameron’s idea.” 

Rose decided she liked her.

 

_It actually was pretty funny when they did it._

_Finn saying, “Rose this is….”_

_“Hey Rose, when you’re better I found some Nordoxican cable sealant. Can you show me where to put it?”_

_“Sure Rey, glad to.”_

_Oh Finn. Poor Finn. He looked so confused and they actually laughed. Which killed her ribs but was worth it._

 

 

 

Later that night, the night before they moored off Nexius Four and Mere cleared her to get up and start “duty” shifts again, she lay in the bunk in the dimmed light and woke to hear Rey speaking in a low and indistinct voice from across the “lounge.” She was whispering because she and other people were supposed to be sleeping but Rose could tell from the girl’s tone of voice that she was asking questions and Poe, in that pilots-telling-war-stories voice of his, the one that carried, was saying, "...so, yeah, at that point, I pretty much knew I was fucked, because post-torture they really have no reason to keep you alive after the paperwork clears, right?….." 

Finn said something she couldn't make out.

Poe continued, " ......no, in a weird way I wasn't. When I was little my mom used to tell me that no matter how bad it gets, no matter how hard you hit bottom there will be something there, some light, some thing, some person that can show you a way out but I thought, not this time. This is it Momma, I'm in the belly of a fucking star destroyer strapped to a fucking table and there is not going to be a way out bar dying....and then a fucking Stormtrooper walks into the cell, orders another one to undo the bolts, marches me out with a gun to my back and shoves me into an alcove and says right out loud and really fast “This is a rescue. Do you want to get out of here?" And I think, “the son of a bitch broke your brain Poe because you are hallucinating,” but the guy takes his helmet off and...boom...."

Rey smiled, you could hear it in her voice, "Finn."

"Right!"

“Hell…” Finn said, “Poe, how can you just….?”

“Shhhhh…” that was Rey.

“It’s not funny you know. I was scared out of my bloody mind man, I’m pretty sure you were too.”

"I know, brother, I know.That's the whole thing. That's how I knew it was real.”

Other voices spoke quietly, C’ai, Commander Ematt, Mere, Laslo, for maybe an hour or so longer. Most of them she couldn’t hear well enough so she just let the sound wash over her in the low light of the floor strips.

Gradually people must have wandered off, to duties or other places to sleep. Some may have fallen asleep in the chairs or on the bench. Finn usually slept on the bench.

 

Commander D’Acy walked out across the darkened cabin later past her bunk and the equipment storage locker at the end. It was easier to see D’Acy in the dark because of the silver curls in her hair. A few small steps up behind the closet was a kind of shortcut to the viewport platform where D’Acy often stood looking out, Rose had figured that out a few days ago but not what she did there. This time though she seemed to stop instead of slipping through. Since the patches were off Rose turned onto one elbow to peer around. Someone else had been sitting quiet and unmoving, in a chair in the shadowed end of the cabin the whole time, wrapped in some dark cloak or blanket.

Except for the glint off the rings Rose wouldn’t have been able to tell who it was. 

“You need to rest,” Larma D’Acy whispered, leaning over as if taking the hand of the person sitting in the dark.

“Later,” General Organa said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day Mere and Rikka, being what passed for medical support then, cleared her for more than short walks around the cabin and she went back to work.

 

Finn brought her her jacket, cleaned somehow, and her pendant. He’d been wearing it around his own neck.

“To keep it safe,” he said. 

She took an inflatable pad and her pillow and found a place to bunk in the cargo hold beside Connix. A few days after they made contact with the Cloud Riders and an old woman named Enfys who would only talk to Chewbacca at first. 

The General had a plan to hack into a banking facility and Poe wanted her to come along.

 

 

They were the Rebellion now.

  

It wasn't like it had been in the children's camps back on H. You couldn't just huddle in a corner, or under a cot, pretend there were walls around you and cry.

Some kids never came out of those corners. 

Those kids had been alone though and she'd had Paige. "It's ok Rosebee," her sister would whisper in their shared cot,sometimes while she was wiping both their tears, "we're going to cry and rest for just a little bit, and then we're going to run away and fight."

She still wasn’t alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Normally I live in the Rogue One Fandom, (*almost* "No light-sabers! we die like men here!"), writing involved RebelCaptain-centric and -inspired epics. (It's a small niche but I live here and it is a good and verdant land) 
> 
> BUT I have been stuck in a hospital bed after some nasty surgery and as I recovered....strapped down with nothing to do but listen to pathos, drama and noisy science happening around me at all (24 freaking) hours I found myself thinking of poor Rose, tucked into that bunk on the Falcon, listening. Thus.
> 
> (all poor editing/proofreading is absolutely attributable to the fact that I am now home and off the really good painkillers and on nothing but Tylenol.)
> 
> PS. I know that current TLJ cannon holds that less than 15 people were rescued from Crait, but I need there to be more. 60+ survivors out of a Fleet of a few thousand and the hundreds Leia tried to save on the Raddus is is JUST TOO HORRIBLE.


End file.
